“Star Trek Into The Darkness” App Now Available and Free On Google Play For Android

Yes, it’s a publicity stunt for the upcoming J.J. Abrams-directed Star Trek flick, but it’s also pretty cool: Paramount Pictures put together a special app that is designed to engage users by offering exclusive content, “real life” missions, and prize giveaways.

The app, which is available on the iOS and Android stores, includes technology from Qualcomm that both predicts and delivers relevant content to the user and also provides augmented reality features. Users can, for example, participate in scavenger hunts IRL by finding and snapping pictures of billboards and other print media that are advertising the film, and you can earn “rewards” for using the audio scan function to prove that you’re listening to or viewing movie trailers and ads.

And of course, users of the app will get access to the type of bonus videos and other imagery that you’d expect to accompany a promotion like this.

Whether or not you give a rip about the new Star Trek movie or think the app is a waste of time, this sort of marketing is the future, and that’s not such a bad thing. It’s a shameless way to get people interested in the film, but that’s actually refreshing, because there’s no trick to it. Paramount’s marketing people are trying to find a way to engage potential filmgoers by offering them something they can’t get anywhere else, and if they succeed in doing so, everybody wins.